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TV sports innovator Simmons to receive honor

Chet Simmons will be honored Thursday in likely the most low-key fashion in his long, distinguished and accolade-filled career in sports media.

Simmons and his wife, Harriet, will have dinner in Savannah with a representative of the United States Sports Academy and his spouse. Simmons might even pick up the check.

"I'll be happy to do it," said the very accommodating Simmons, who selected a restaurant near the visitors' downtown hotel, not his Tybee Island residence. "Something convenient for them."

Simmons, 79, still will be the center of attention as he receives the academy's Distinguished Service Award. USSA, a university which prepares students for careers in sports, is in Daphne, Ala. Previous honorees include Don Shula, Martina Navratilova, Pat Summitt, Eddie Robinson, George Steinbrenner and Bud Selig.

"I'm delighted," said Simmons, a University of Alabama graduate. "I'm really happy about what they do."

Simmons said it was his idea to keep festivities low key, but that was not a reflection on his appreciation for the honor. He has been a Savannah resident for about 21 years, the last 15 or so on Tybee Island.

"I've had enough dinners with a lot of people," said Simmons, who in 2005 received the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' lifetime achievement award in New York City.

His contributions as a TV sports pioneer are too numerous to list here in their entirety. They include being an integral part of ABC's "Wide World of Sports" and the network's Olympic Games coverage, as well as an executive with NBC Sports and the founding president and CEO of ESPN in 1979. He left ESPN in 1982 to become the first commissioner of the United States Football League.

Simmons will receive the academy's Order of the Eagle Exemplar medal and Academy Rosette, a symbol of recognition and affiliation.